Justin Elliott | July 3, 2009, 6:03PM

Donald Rumsfeld has finally said he's sorry. Sort of.

In an interview with biographer Bradley Graham, the former secretary of defense says he has regrets about the administration's controversial detainee policy.

The twist is that Rumsfeld doesn't regret the policy itself -- specifically the abandoning of the Geneva Conventions for detainees picked up in Afghanistan. Rather, he regrets how the policy was formulated.

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Topics: Defense Department, Detainees, Donald Rumsfeld, Pentagon

Defense Contractors

Book: Rumsfeld Didn't Cut Weapons Programs Because Of 'His Own Financial Situation'

Justin Elliott | June 30, 2009, 6:45PM

Here's an intriguing detail from the new 685-page tome on Donald Rumsfeld, Bradley Graham's By His Own Rules: The Ambitions, Successes, and Ultimate Failures of Donald Rumsfeld: Several Rumsfeld associates say the defense secretary didn't order any cuts of major weapons programs early in his tenure because of financial stakes he held in the defense business.

Rumsfeld valued his personal fortune at between $50 to $210 million at the beginning of the Bush Administration. The problem was many of the securities he held were in companies that did business with the DOD, which could put Rumsfeld in violation of government ethics rules.

So Rumsfeld had to divest some of these assets -- a whole lot of them, it turned out. And during that process, which went "slowly," Graham reports, Rumsfeld simply put off canceling any major weapons programs, a move some on his staff apparently expected him to make. Rumsfeld's specific thinking is unclear.

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Topics: Defense Contractors, Defense Department, Donald Rumsfeld, Pentagon

Guantanamo

Sketchy DOD Report Claims 5% Of Freed Gitmo Detainees 'Reengaged' In 'Terrorist Activity'

Justin Elliott | May 26, 2009, 6:23PM

We've gotten our hands on the Pentagon report on which the New York Times based its front-pager last week asserting that 1 in 7 Guantanamo detainees "returned" to terrorism.

You can read the document, which the DOD made available to reporters today, here.

The bottom line: Those who have counseled skepticism about the DOD numbers would seem to be vindicated by the actual report.

The report does indeed use the formulation "reengaged" in terrorism. This was the same formulation the Times' Elisabeth Bumiller used in her front-page story -- until the online version of it was changed.

But the Pentagon report does not attempt to establish the original status of the detainees it claims "reengaged" in terrorism. It seems to simply not consider the possibility that, as has been reported by McClatchy, innocent men ended up in Gitmo, and some were radicalized during their imprisonment.

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Topics: Elisabeth Bumiller, Guantanamo, New York Times, Pentagon

Patrick Tillman

New Afghanistan Commander Had Role In Tillman Friendly-Fire Episode

Zachary Roth | May 11, 2009, 3:24PM

It looks Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the man taking over as the new top commander in Afghanistan, was a key player in one of the more shameful episodes of the Bush administration's war on terror -- though it's unclear exactly how much blame, if any, he himself deserves.

In 2007, the Associated Press reported that McChrystal suspected when he approved a Silver Star citation for Pat Tillman that the former NFL star killed in Afghanistan may have been felled by friendly fire. McChrystal told military investigators that that suspicion had led him to send a memo to top generals, urging them not to say publicly that Tillman was killed under "devastating enemy fire."

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Topics: Patrick Tillman, Pentagon

Office Of Net Assessment

Exclusive: Inside The Pentagon's Idea Factory

Justin Elliott | March 10, 2009, 5:35PM

The Great Siberian War Of 2030

The Revival Of Chinese Nationalism: Challenges To American Ideals

The Future Of Undersea Warfare

Chinese And Russian Asymmetrical Strategies For Space Dominance (2010-2030)
--Index of Office of Net Assessment studies

A tiny office in the Pentagon employs a handful of military officers, teamed up with outside contractors, to study the future.

An index of reports produced by the Office of Net Assessment over the past 20 years, obtained by TPMmuckraker through the Freedom of Information Act, provides a window into the thinking and concerns at the highest levels of the Defense Department.

The jargony official description of the office -- often called the Pentagon's internal think tank -- refers to comparing U.S. "military capabilities" to those of other countries and identifying "emerging or future threats or opportunities for the United States." And, indeed, many of the ONA studies' titles reflect the abstruse interests of military academics (one effort is called Non-Standard Models Of The Diffusion Of Military Technologies: An Alternative View). Others, though, are downright Strangelovian: Fighting A Nuclear-Armed Regional Opponent: Is Victory Possible? [December 2007]; After Next Nuclear Use [July 2002].

The range of subjects includes energy: Future Asian-Pacific Hydrocarbon Demand (1996-2015) [December 1997]; weapons: Role Of High Power Microwave Weapons In Future Intercontinental Conventional War [July 2007]; and Islam: Occultation In Perpertuum: Shi'ite Eschatology And The Iranian Nuclear Crisis [May 2007].

There's the geopolitical: Preventing Large Scale State Failure [April 2008]; the historical: Normandy Retrospective [November 1996], The End of Religiously Motivated Warfare: Lessons From The Puritans And Beyond [June 2007]; and the postmodern: Information As Advertisement And Advertisement As Information [July 2008].

Some of the studies are more inscrutable: The Changing Images Of Human Nature [April 1995], Biometaphor For The Body Politic [March 2006].

The office specializes in looking at issues "20 to 30 years in the future," according to Jan van Tol, who served at ONA before becoming a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

Van Tol says ONA has no more than 15 staffers. Most of the work is done by outside contractors. Despite its size, the influence of the office has been vast since its creation in 1973 by Andrew Marshall, the guru-like figure who still leads ONA. Fred Kaplan, in his book Daydream Believers, profiles Marshall, the so-called "Yoda" of the Pentagon. Kaplan explains the key to Marshall's longevity (he has kept his job longer than anyone at a policy level in Washington) -- and his influence:

"he built a far-flung network of acolytes and loyalists: officers whose unconventional projects he had encouraged and helped to fund; analysts whose work he had sponsored and whose ideas he had helped form; and high-ranking officials, as well as committee chairmen on Capitol Hill, who simply valued having a man of ideas so high up in the Pentagon."

The office reports to the Secretary of Defense, but "its informal channels are probably more important than what you'd find on an organizational chart" says Paul Bracken, professor of management and political science at Yale, who has written at length on net assessment.

"I think it is a powerful influence not just on the building, but on the country. Because there are so few organizations taking fresh looks at problems and not just looking at the fad of the moment," Bracken says.

ONA is perhaps best known for its Cold War work evaluating the strength of the Soviet Union relative to the United States. (The lingering Soviet focus is evident in the index of studies, for example a July 1991 report titled Could The Soviet Threat Go Away?). More recently Marshall was intimately involved in Donald Rumsfeld's project of "military transformation."

One of the preoccupations of the office is American dominance. As I've previously reported, the office earlier this decade ordered a monograph, the length of a short book, that examined ancient empires to glean lessons for the U.S. Two studies in the index are titled simply Preserving American Primacy [January 2006] and Preserving U.S. Military Superiority [August 2001].

In the past decade-plus, ONA has turned its sights to Asia, focusing obsessively on China as the next Soviet-style rival power to the United States. In some of the China work, the apprehension of American military planners is palpable. One March 2006 study is called Rising China Redux: Imperial Memories In A Modern Milieu; a 2005 report addresses The Chinese Penchant For Surprise. Another from 1997 is on Chinese Defense Equipment Modernization to the Year 2020.

The index, while extensive, is not comprehensive. Several studies with classified titles were withheld. The studies' authors are generally listed as individual academics or outside contractors like the Hudson Institute, a Washington think tank, government consulting giant Booz Allen Hamilton, or lesser-known firms like Scitor Corporation and IHS International.

Some more highlights from the index, which you can read in full here, after the jump:

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Topics: Andrew Marshall, Defense Department, Office Of Net Assessment, Pentagon

Laurie Mylroie

Saddam-Qaeda Conspiracy Theorist Surfaces Writing Iraq Reports For The Pentagon

Justin Elliott | January 29, 2009, 5:53PM

It's a truism that neoconservatives have a talent for failing upward: for repeatedly getting important things wrong and not seeing their careers suffer - for, in fact, being handed new opportunities to pursue their work (see, e.g., Kristol, Bill; and Hayes, Stephen).

Today we can add another name to that list: Laurie Mylroie, the quintessential conspiracy theorist of the Iraq War era, wrote reports about Iraq for the Pentagon as recently as Fall 2007, years after she was discredited, according to documents obtained by TPMmuckraker.

Mylroie is the author of two studies -- "Saddam's Strategic Concepts: Dealing With UNSCOM," dated Feb. 1, 2007, and "Saddam's Foreign Intelligence Service," dated Sept. 24, 2007 -- on a list of reports from the Pentagon's Office Of Net Assessment [ONA], obtained by TPMmuckraker through the Freedom Of Information Act. The ONA is the Defense Department's internal think tank, once described by the Washington Post as "obscure but highly influential."

Those who follow the neoconservative movement closely are stunned that Mylroie has surfaced again -- and especially that she is doing government-sponsored work on Iraq. "It's kind of astonishing that the ONA would come even within a mile of her," says Jacob Heilbrunn, author of They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons. "I think she is completely discredited."

"I'm shocked," Steve Clemons of the New America Foundation says. "If this came out in 2007, she was presumably working on it in 2006, and, by that time, the fate and fortunes of a lot of these people was already switching."

Why is it so astonishing that a government agency would hire Mylroie to write about Iraq? While her career as an Iraq specialist started out auspiciously enough -- she studied and later taught at Harvard, wrote a book on Saddam with Judith Miller in 1990, and served as an adviser to the 1992 Clinton campaign -- Mylroie later veered outside the mainstream and became enamored with theories rejected by virtually everyone else in the field.

Heilbrunn suggests Mylroie has been underappreciated as one of the intellectual progenitors of the Iraq war. "She was one of the original fermenters of the idea that Saddam Hussein had these intimate ties with Al Qaeda," he says.

In the definitive profile of Mylroie, written for the Washington Monthly in 2003, terrorism analyst Peter Bergen locates Mylroie's turn in the wake of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, when she developed her theory that the Iraqi government was behind the attack. Bergen sums up the animating principle of Mylroie's work: that "Saddam was the mastermind of a vast anti-U.S. terrorist conspiracy in the face of virtually all evidence and expert opinion to the contrary." (For a good example of Mylroie Logic, read her Sept. 13, 2001, WSJ op-ed "The Iraqi Connection," in which she argues that Iraq had a hand in 9/11 because ... well, mainly just because.) Bergen goes on:

Mylroie believes that Saddam was not only behind the '93 Trade Center attack, but also every anti-American terrorist incident of the past decade, from the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania to the leveling of the federal building in Oklahoma City to September 11 itself.

Mylroie's theories wouldn't have mattered - except that she had the ear of Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Scooter Libby, Jim Woolsey, et al. Perle blurbed Mylroie's January 2001 book, Study of Revenge: The First World Trade Center Attack and Saddam Hussein's War against America, as "splendid and wholly convincing."

In response to TPMmuckaker's questions about the selection process for ONA researchers, a DOD spokesperson said in a statement: "All aspects of researchers and research institutions are considered, with an  emphasis on obtaining the widest range of possible intellectual approaches in order to provide a fully balanced approach to the analysis of future developments."

And how did the Pentagon use Mylroie's Iraq reports? Says DOD: "These reports were part of a multi-scope research effort to identify the widest possible range of analysts whose expertise was likely to generate insights and concepts which would contribute to Net Assessments on-going work to develop and refine trends, risks, and opportunities which will shape future (2020) national security environments."

Mylroie's work for the Pentagon is all the more interesting because, as her star faded along with the Iraq war, she largely disappeared from the public sphere. Her most recent public writings consist of a nasty spat with other writers on the right in 2008. The Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes, himself a prominent perpetuator of falsehoods about Saddam-Al Qaeda links, is one of a group of journalists who cannot stomach Myrloie out of annoyance that her work helps to discredit their own, somewhat less feverish theories. Hayes has reported, with distaste, that Mylroie believes "al Qaeda is little more than an Iraqi 'front group.'" For more, read Daniel Pipes on "Laurie Mylroie's Shoddy, Loopy, Zany Theories - Exposed."

While Mylroie is often identified as an "adjunct fellow" at the American Enterprise Institute, an AEI spokesperson calls that category "a very loose relationship" and says that the main link between Mylroie and the think tank was the publication of her book back in 2001.

Laurie Mylroie did not respond to emails seeking comment. The DOD spokesperson has promised to send me copies of Mylroie's Iraq reports. We'll tell you more when we hear anything.

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Topics: Defense Department, Laurie Mylroie, Office Of Net Assessment, Pentagon

Pentagon

Hodes Blasts 'Whitewash' IG Report on Pentagon Pundits

Elana Schor | January 16, 2009, 5:23PM

The Defense Department inspector general has absolved the Pentagon of any guilt for its systematic farming-out of military officials to promote the Iraq war on TV. But Rep. Paul Hodes (D-NH) isn't about to let the issue drop.

From a statement his office provided to TPMmuckraker:

This report is a whitewash and did not ask the right questions. There are factual inaccuracies and a lack of depth to the investigation. It's a nice parting gift to the Bush White House from the Pentagon. I plan to continue to pursue this matter to get the answers the American people deserve to ensure that they are not the victims of propaganda and deception in matters of war and peace.

Given that the IG report essentially declared there to be insufficient evidence to prove whether the pundits program violated anti-propaganda rules, Hodes has a point about the depth of the probe. Perhaps the coming Government Accountability Office report on the military's Iraq marketing will get more substantive answers from the networks.

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Topics: Pentagon

Iraq

Pentagon Report Confirms Failure Of Iraq Reconstruction Effort

Zachary Roth | December 15, 2008, 11:09AM

The New York Times and Pro Publica got an advanced look at a report on the American reconstruction of Iraq -- and it's not pretty.

The report concludes, in the words of the Times and Pro Publica, that even now, "the United States government has in place neither the policies and technical capacity nor the organizational structure that would be needed to undertake such a program on anything approaching this scale."

And it quotes Colin Powell saying that, in the months after the invasion, DOD "kept inventing numbers of Iraqi security forces -- the number would jump 20,000 a week! 'We now have 80,000, we now have 100,000, we now have 120,000.'"

But here's our favorite detail:

When the Office of Management and Budget balked at the American occupation authority's abrupt request for about $20 billion in new reconstruction money in August 2003, a veteran Republican lobbyist working for the authority made a bluntly partisan appeal to Joshua B. Bolten, then the O.M.B. director and now the White House chief of staff. "To delay getting our funds would be a political disaster for the President," wrote the lobbyist, Tom C. Korologos. "His election will hang for a large part on show of progress in Iraq and without the funding this year, progress will grind to a halt." With administration backing, Congress allocated the money later that year.

There was no evidence in the story that the Times and Pro Publica had offered Korologos a chance to respond, so TPMmuckraker contacted him. He responded in an email:

They did NOT give me a chance to comment. That all came from a 3 page memo I wrote on strategy for passing that first Iraq supplemental in 2003. Some $60 (b) billion was for the military side and $20 (b) billion was for the civilian side. The next sentence said, "The quicker we succeed at CPA the quicker our 150,000 boys will come marching home again."

That response doesn't do much to change the clear impression created by the IG report that Korologos cited President Bush's need to get reelected as a reason to support spending $20 billion of taxpayer money. And that OMB ultimately went along with the request.

Here are some other eyebrow-raising nuggets from the report:

In an illustration of the hasty and haphazard planning, a civilian official at the United States Agency for International Development was at one point given four hours to determine how many miles of Iraqi roads would need to be reopened and repaired. The official searched through the agency's reference library, and his estimate went directly into a master plan. Whatever the quality of the agency's plan, it eventually began running what amounted to a parallel reconstruction effort in the provinces that had little relation with the rest of the American effort.

And...

Money for many of the local construction projects still under way is divided up by a spoils system controlled by neighborhood politicians and tribal chiefs. "Our district council chairman has become the Tony Soprano of Rasheed, in terms of controlling resources," said an American Embassy official working in a dangerous Baghdad neighborhood. " 'You will use my contractor or the work will not get done.'"

And here's a passage that won't exactly boost Donald Rumsfeld's already rock-bottom reputation for knowing what he was talking about:

On the eve of the invasion, as it began to dawn on a few American officials that the price for rebuilding Iraq would be vastly greater than they had been told, the degree of miscalculation was illustrated in an encounter between Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, and Jay Garner, the retired lieutenant general who had hastily been named the chief of what would be a short-lived civilian authority called the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance.

The history records how Mr. Garner presented Mr. Rumsfeld with several alternative rebuilding plans, including one that would include projects across Iraq.

"What do you think that'll cost?" Mr. Rumsfeld asked of the more expansive plan.

"I think it's going to cost billions of dollars," Mr. Garner said.

"My friend," Mr. Rumsfeld replied, "if you think we're going to spend a billion dollars of our money over there, you are sadly mistaken."

In a way he never anticipated, Mr. Rumsfeld turned out to be correct: before that year was out, the United States had appropriated more than $20 billion for the reconstruction, which would indeed involve projects across the entire country.

The report was compiled by Stuart Bowen, a Republican lawyer who serves as the special inspector general for postwar reconstruction in Iraq. The Times and Pro Publica obtained their copies from people outside Bowen's office. The report will be presented February 2nd at a Congressional hearing.

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Topics: Donald Rumsfeld, Iraq, Iraq Corruption, Pentagon

Pentagon

Pentagon Pressured About Refusal To Let Sexual Assault Expert Testify

Andrew Tilghman | August 13, 2008, 2:00PM

It's been a couple weeks since the Pentagon defied a Congressional subpoena and refused to let the military's chief sexual assault expert testify at a hearing about sexual assault in the military.

Lawmakers on the House oversight committee were definitely not happy about it at the time.

Now the committee is stepping up its pressure on the Department of Defense to let Dr. Kaye Whitley, the director of the department's Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office, speak on Capitol Hill.

Yesteday, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) wrote a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates urging the department to comply with the Congressional subpoena issued for Whitley.

"We believe the Department's actions are completely without justification. The Department has provided no valid legal basis for its decision to prevent a witness from complying with a duly authorized congressional subpoena. The President has not asserted executive privilege over the testimony of Dr. Whitley. During the hearing, Subcommittee Chairman Tierney asked Mr. Dominguez whether there had been any assertion of executive privilege, and he testified that there had not been.

In addition, the committee also wants to know precisely why officials didn't want Whitley to testify. The letter to Gates also asked for all emails and other internal communications relating to the request for Whitley's testimony.

If the Pentagon does not comply, the committee threated to subpoena three high-ranking Pentagon officials to a hearing on Sept. 12 to testify about the Defense Department's legal rational for not allowing Whitley to testify.

Late Update: Gates has agreed to let Whitley testify

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Topics: Pentagon

Pentagon

Defying Subpoena, DoD Orders Sexual Assault Program Chief Not To Testify Before Congress

Andrew Tilghman | August 1, 2008, 2:34PM

The Pentagon defied a Congressional subpoena yesterday by refusing to let the head of its sexual assault program testify at an oversight hearing about sexual assault in the military.

The House panel had issued a subpoena for Dr. Kaye Whitley, the director of the Defense Department's Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office.

But Pentagon officials ordered her not to testify and instead sent her supervisor, Michael Dominguez, a principal deputy undersecretary for defense, in her place.

Whitley's absence came on the same day a federal judge rejected the White House's claim to blanket immunity from Congressional oversight in an unrelated case.

Dominguez told the committee the Pentagon was not citing executive privileged but had simply instructed Whitley not to show up.

A Pentagon spokeswoman, Cynthia O. Smith, provided a statement today in response to questions about Whitley's defiance of the subpoena.

It is inappropriate to question Dr. Whitley about the program when Mr. Dominguez, the decision maker responsible for the program and for the program's results, is available to answer those questions.

Mr. Dominguez has full accountability and responsibility for the Sexual Assault Prevention Office and he has the full authority to discuss and answer all questions regarding the SAPRO and the Department's sexual assault policies. Dr. Whitley is responsible for implementing the policy....

Dr. Whitley has been on the Hill numerous times discussing the DoD's sexual assault program and she will continue to do so.

Lawmakers interpreted the move as an affront to Congressional authority and said they had specifically sought Whitley based on her knowledge of how the military's sexual assault programs actually work in practice.

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) said to Dominguez at the hearing:

"What is, what it is you're trying to hide? She's the one in charge, let me speak, she's the one in charge of dealing with this problem. We wanted to hear from her. And despite a subpoena from a committee of Congress, you've been instructed by the secretary, undersecretary or deputy secretary in charge of legislative affairs not to allow her to come? ... I don't know who you think elected you to defy the Congress of the United States. We're an independent branch of government. ... this is an unacceptable, absolutely unacceptable position for the department to take and, uh, we are not going to let it stand."

Rep. John Tierney (D-MA) tersely dismissed Dominguez without asking him any questions about sexual assault.

"Well let me tell you something Mr. Dominguez, we decide who we want to have for witnesses at this hearing, we decide who, uh, the people that are going to give us factual testimony, the ones that we want to hear from when we are investigating or having a hearing. So for now Mr. Dominguez, you're dismissed."

Here is a clip of the entire nine-minute exchange between Dominguez and the lawmakers.

In June, the House panel asked Whitley to testify. When the Pentagon resisted, the committee issued a subpoena on Monday compelling her to attend the hearing yesterday, according to a statement today from Tierney, the chair of the oversight committee's National Security and Foreign Affairs subcommittee.

The hearing on sexual assault in the military came the same day as a
GAO report that found sexual assault in the military is probably underreported by half.

Some victims in the military do not report sexual assault because they fear "that nothing will be done; fear of ostracism, harassment, or ridicule; and concern that peers would gossip," according to the report.

Whitley's office is essentially a policy office and the bulk of the military sexual assault support programs are run by individual commanders. The Pentagon has resisted efforts to create an Office of the Victims' Advocate, which would oversee those efforts more independently.

An advocate for military victims of sexual assault tells TPMmuckraker that Whitley's office is under-resourced and reflects the Pentagon's lack of attention to sexual assault.

"We are concerned that it does not have all the tools and personnel it needs to go forward. And we're increasingly concerned that it is becoming politicized," said Anita Sanchez, communications director for the Miles Foundation.

Tierney said the committee is considering "ALL our options here in the face of this blatant disregard of a validly-issued subpoena," including seeking a contempt of Congress charge for Whitley, Dominguez or others.

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Topics: Henry Waxman, Pentagon

Pentagon

Auditors Sought To Cover-Up Defense Contractor's Overbilling

Andrew Tilghman | July 23, 2008, 12:54PM

From the Washington Post:

Auditors at an oversight agency of the Pentagon were pressured by supervisors to skew their reports on a major defense contractor's work, hiding wrongdoing and charges of overbilling, according to an 80-page report from the Government Accountability Office.

The Defense Contract Audit Agency, which is charged with overseeing contractors for the Defense Department, made an upfront agreement with "a major aerospace company" to limit the scope of work and basis for an audit, the report said.

When the contractor, who is not named in the report, objected to the draft findings of the DCAA audit, managers at the audit agency assigned a new supervisor to the case and threatened the senior auditor with personnel action if "he did not delete findings from the report and change the draft audit opinion to adequate," according to the GAO report.

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Topics: Pentagon

Pentagon

Pentagon Wants Investigation of Air Force Lobbying Effort

Andrew Tilghman | June 27, 2008, 9:24AM

Was the Air Force lobbying against the Pentagon on Capitol Hill?

This morning The Hill reports:

The Air Force has been ordered to investigate whether officials lobbied members of Congress improperly on a plan to merge military bases.

Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England asked the secretary of the Air Force --days before he was forced to resign -- to conduct an internal investigation after Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) raised concerns over the Air Force's actions.

McCain, the GOP candidate for president, believes a provision in the 2008 emergency supplemental sponsored by Sens. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) and Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), the leading defense appropriators, was the result of lobbying by Air Force officials. Similar language is in the House bill.

The measure would allow a military service secretary or the head of another federal agency to delay or veto a decision by the Base Realignment and Closure Commission (BRAC) on "joint basing," an initiative that requires branches of the military to consolidate bases to save money.

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Topics: Pentagon

John Murtha

FBI Investigation of PA Pentagon Contractors Reveals More Money, Contracts

Kate Klonick | June 10, 2008, 2:05PM

What started as an FBI investigation into suspicious payments to an unconfirmed nominee for an Air Force position, has grown to include seven contracts between the Pentagon and two tax-exempt defense firms in Pennsylvania.

In 2007, the FBI began an internal investigation after an article in the Washington Post revealed that the Air Force had used Commonwealth Research Institute (CRI) to pay Charles Riechers, a senior civilian who was waiting on finalization of his White House nomination to principal deputy assistant secretary for acquisition.

In October 2007, Riechers was found dead in an apparent suicide.

Since then, the scope of the federal investigation has broadened, and the FBI and Pentagon's Defense Criminal Investigative Service issued subpoenas in April to CRI and its parent company, Concurrent Technologies.

Those subpoenas are seeking information about at least seven contracts between the two non-profits and the Pentagon. From the Post:

Contracting documents obtained by The Post show that four of the contracts, worth up to $130 million, were awarded to Concurrent over several weeks in May and June 2002. Investigators also are examining a Concurrent deal in 2006 that was worth up to $45 million.
Investigators also want to know about two CRI deals, one from 2003 worth up to $10 million and another awarded without competition in 2006 that is worth up to $45 million.

All seven contracts were awarded by the Department of the Interior's National Business Center. The center has an interesting track record on non-competitive contracts:

The Pentagon has used that center for billions of dollars in purchases in recent years, though audits have found that the center often awarded contracts without competition or checks to determine whether prices were reasonable. One audit in late 2006 found that the center "routinely violated rules designed to protect U.S. Government interests."

Perhaps one more interesting twist to the story, involves the $226 million in earmarks that CRI and Concurrent have received in recent years, through Rep. John Murtha (D-PA).

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Topics: Earmarks, John Murtha, Pentagon

Pentagon

Needed: More War Profiteer Police

Andrew Tilghman | May 28, 2008, 12:19PM

The Defense Department wants more manpower to police itself.

The Defense Department's Inspector General says the massive growth in military spending during the past six years has far outpaced its ability to keep track of the money. A new report made public by the Project on Government Oversight outlines how the IG's office plans to grow -- by about 30 percent -- in the next seven years.

The rapid growth of the DoD budget since FY 2000 leaves the Department increasingly more vulnerable to the fraud, waste and abuse that undermines the Department's mission.

and

Furthermore, the demand for IG services to support the [Global War on Terror] and the ongoing operations in southwest Asia has forced us to adjust our priorities, resulting in gaps in coverage in important areas, such as major weapons acquisition, health care fraud, product substitution and defense intelligence agencies.

"Weapons acquisitions" is a pretty broad catagory and probably includes $531 million war ships, like the one the New York Times wrote about a few weeks ago. The Navy has been notoriously bad about cost overruns and runaway spending.

For years, the Pentagon's accounting procedures have been so shoddy that the Defense Department cannot even properly fail an audit. Trillions -- with a T -- of dollars are improperly accounted for. In fact, the Pentagon says there is no way it'll be able to handle a real audit until at least 2016.

Part of the problem may be that many retired military officials go on to work for defense contractors in later life.

The GAO has also been harping on the military's use of money

So it's no wonder that we've been hearing about absurd contracts like a 25-year-old Miami club goer who wins a $300 million contract to arm our allies in Afghanistan.

The Defense Department consumes about 19 percent of all federal spending.